Cephalopods – Kopffüßler

On July 25th Kris posted a link to this incredible mpeg of a cephalopod changing colour. More precisely, the cephalopod mimics a coral at the beginning of the film and then reveals itself.

Now the link has also been posted on MetaFilter (twice, in fact, and you can meet a human cephalopod there, too), and I started exploring the site that hosts the movie some more: Cephbase is a “database-driven web site on all living cephalopods (octopus, squid, cuttlefish and nautilus)” including an image and a video database. The FAQ are also worth checking out.

I was also impressed by the versatility of Gomorrah, the pet octopus of Michael Medaglia. The page has links to mpeg and ram versions of the movie, though the links are switched.

Way too hot

It’s almost been a week since my last posting, and it’s still hot here in Bonn. Temperatures reach about 40°C (104°F) in the daytime and don’t fall below 20°C (68°F) at night. I think the night before last was the hottest night in Germany ever – that is, since temperature statistics are being kept. The lowest temperature measured at one place in Germany was 26.7°C (80°F) that night. I’m really glad that I don’t have to return to school until the middle of September because I find it impossible to work in this heat. But at least it’s a dry heat – I don’t want to imagine how things would be with higher humidity.